One of the aspects that most concerns me about my children's education is emotional education. It's a topic that interests me a lot, and I feel like we fill their heads with knowledge, and often forget the essentials: teaching them to manage frustrations, success, failures, losses, fears, rejections, etc.
Traditionally, education has focused on cognitive aspects and neglected the more emotional ones, which is why parents themselves can feel disoriented about how to address these issues.
I recommend the book "Brilliant Parents, Fascinating Teachers" by Augusto Cury; I imagine many of you already know it. This psychiatrist offers a very interesting reflection on how to educate emotions.
After reading it, I'd like to share some simple, but I believe very useful, ideas with you:
- That which generates emotions in us, good or bad, will always occupy a privileged place in our memories. Let's share our emotions with our children, and they will never forget it.
- Television, consoles, video games, the internet… are causing communication at home to deteriorate. It is very important to talk to our children, about everything, but especially about our life experiences, our achievements and failures, our hopes and frustrations. We all have experiences behind us; let's share them with them. That's how we'll reach their hearts.
- Humanizing knowledge is another interesting proposal from this author. It's about becoming storytellers. Behind the facts and objectively given information, there is often a story, there are tears, mistakes, difficulties, anxiety, and often the courage of the protagonist to move forward. Many thinkers died for their ideas. It's about creating the emotional climate they experienced while researching. Children may forget rules and regulations, but not our stories. This will help create new role models and heroes.
- Teaching them to govern their own thoughts and emotions is one of the best lessons we can give our children. Training positive thoughts and discarding or learning to manage negative ones is a task we should all learn from a young age.
- Having them participate in social projects will vaccinate them against individualism and selfishness. In the era we live in, so based on consumerism and the immediate satisfaction of our whims and desires, we should always reserve a part of our lives to do something for others.
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